Rabbi Yehuda Levin blamed the grisly death of 8-year-old Leibby Kletzky on the passage of same-sex marriage in the state legislature and the gradual acceptance of gay marriage on his weekly radio show yesterday.

“First [gay's] wanted rights, then they wanted adoption, they wanted special protections, and ultimately they wanted marriage — and we all know that we did precious little. If those three or fourth thousand people [who searched for Kletzky], at the direction of the greater Israel and their leaders and their common sense, would have come out, maybe, against the marriage, against this final nail in the coffin of morality…maybe we wouldn’t have had to had this episode of [evil] replay itself. [Read Full Story]

JERUSALEM – A once unimaginable movement is emerging from within Israel's insular Orthodox Jewish community: homosexuals demanding to be accepted and embraced, no matter what the Bible says.

Living alongside a secular majority that has largely embraced the Western gay rights movement, Israel's religious gays are increasingly rejecting age-old dictates to ignore their attraction, abstain from sex or undergo therapy that supposedly will make them straight.

A decade ago, says Yuval Cherlow, a heterosexual Orthodox rabbi, he would have dismissed the phenomenon as "two or four crazy people that are assimilating into Western world culture."

Then he was invited to a meeting of Orthodox homosexuals. More than 50 people turned up, nearly all graduates of Orthodox religious seminaries. Cherlow said he began to realize the issue had to be addressed, and he now advises religious gay groups. [Read Full Story]

Evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish leaders, determined to head off momentum for same-sex marriage in Albany, say they are mobilizing an extensive campaign to block legislation that would make New York the sixth state to allow gay men and lesbians to wed.

“Our pastors are fired up by the governor’s assault on marriage,” said the Rev. Jason J. McGuire, executive director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, a lobbying group that represents evangelical churches in the state. “We’re already in gear.”

Opponents of same-sex marriage have already financed a wave of 500,000 automated calls urging voters to contact undecided lawmakers. And the traditional religious coalition that has fought same-sex marriage in previous legislative sessions now counts among its members Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, who played only a muted role the last time the issue was debated, in 2009, when he had just been appointed to lead the Catholic Archdiocese of New York. [Read Full Story]

By Jay MichaelsonFebruary 8, 2011

In January, I went to a shabbaton with 140 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Orthodox Jews. Yes, Virginia, there are gay Orthodox Jews. There always have been. And while I have been working in the LGBT Jewish community for many years, I saw more courage, endurance and strength that weekend than I ever have before.